BEIRUT: Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Friday his Cabinet would hold its first regular session next week as analysts predicted it would deliver on its vows to agree on a new vote law and pass the 2017 draft state budget.

Hariri said his 30-member national unity government would get down to business next Wednesday to begin tackling urgent issues. Speaking during a meeting at the Grand Serail with an expanded delegation of the country’s private sector, Economic Committees and bankers, Hariri also said that Aoun’s planned visit to Saudi Arabia would greatly help in bringing Arab tourists back to Lebanon.

“We are holding a Cabinet session next Wednesday. Inshallah, pertinent decrees [to launch offshore oil and gas exploration] will be on its agenda. There are many other matters which we will successively launch.”

Hariri said he and Aoun were in agreement on 95 percent of economic issues, promising that his government would take measures to ease the sharp economic crisis. “The president’s visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will greatly help in the return of tourists to Lebanon,” he said.

Analysts said the Cabinet, formed in relatively record time, would agree a new elections law, fill key vacant posts in the public administration, and try to solve the chronic problems of electricity, water and trash.

Sami Nader, a professor of economics and international relations at Universite Saint Joseph, told The Daily Star: “I expect the government to reach an agreement on a compromise electoral law that will eventually bring in the same political class and ensure the sharing of spoils among the same political leaders,”

“In Lebanon’s history, a national unity government is tantamount to a limited stock company or the sharing of spoils,” said Nader, also the director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, a Beirut-based think tank.

He added that talks were now focused on reconciling two different hybrid electoral laws to replace the controversial 1960 majoritarian system which was used in the last parliamentary elections in 2009.

One proposal was made by Speaker Nabih Berri’s bloc, which calls for half of Parliament’s 128 members to be elected on the basis of proportional representation and the other half on the current 1960 winner-take-all system. The other hybrid proposal, presented by the Future Movement, the Lebanese Forces and MP Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party, calls for 60 MPs to be elected on the basis of proportional representation, and the remaining 68 MPs on a winner-take all system.

Nader said the government would face difficulties in passing the 2017 draft state budget because of lingering differences over the public sector’s wage hike bill and demands by some parliamentary blocs, mainly Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc, for a breakdown of $11 billion in extra-budgetary spending by previous governments in the past few years.

“The projected salary increases for civil servants and public schoolteachers are estimated at $2 billion annually which the government cannot afford without imposing new taxes,” Nader said.

But Imad Salamey, political science professor at the Lebanese American University, sounded optimistic that the government would be able to pass a state budget and endorse a new electoral law.

“Despite the government’s short term, I believe there is a general interest among all political parties to reach an agreement for a new electoral law. I think there has been significant consensus on introducing a new electoral law quota for women, and perhaps to introduce proportional representation,” Salamey told The Daily Star. “So, a new election law seems to be on its way for approval that will be a mixed system with a woman quota,” he added.

Major parliamentary blocs have vowed to prevent a return to the 1960 law, which called for electoral districts to be based on the qada (existing districts).

Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said his ministry was ready to implement any vote law on which political leaders agree for next year’s elections.

“We are ready as an administration to implement any law for parliamentary elections on which political accord is reached. We will be capable of holding these elections on its basis,” Machnouk said during a meeting with Aoun at Baabda Palace.

Addressing Machnouk, who headed a delegation of senior ministry officials, Aoun said computerization of state administrations would help fight graft.

Salamey stressed that the government and Parliament had no choice but to endorse a state budget in order to preserve international confidence in Lebanon’s financial system. “There are no easy budgetary answers to financial problems and challenges. But the government and Parliament have to approve an annual budget to maintain financial stability and international confidence in Lebanon’s financial system,” he said.

Salamey, however, sounded somewhat skeptical about the government’s ability to radically solve the electricity, water and trash problems during its short lifespan. “There are challenges that no government has been able to resolve fully. Given its short life, one must not expect miracles from this government in terms of providing adequate public services,” he said.

Nader, the USJ professor, said he expected the government’s appointments to fill vacant public posts to proceed smoothly “because they involve the division of shares among the blocs represented in the Cabinet.”

“Similarly, the logic of compromises will prevail within the Cabinet in tackling the problems of water, electricity and garbage,” he said.